The Sky That Sings Without Words

Have you ever stepped outside at night,
and looked up,
and felt very small,
and very full,
all at once?

The sky was doing something.
The sky was singing.

It sang without a voice,
without any words you could write down.
The morning sun comes up like a runner who loves to run.
The stars hang where no one can reach them.
The far blue edge of everything leans down close.
And all of it is saying the same thing,
over and over,
day after day,
night after night:

"Look what God is like.
Look how big.
Look how beautiful.
Look how good."

There is no place too far away to hear it.
There is no language it cannot speak.
A child in the desert,
a child in the snow,
a child who has never read a single book:
the sky sings to all of them,
because the One who made the sky
wanted everyone, everyone, to know him.

That is his heart.
He did not make the world and walk away.
Long before, on the very first page of this story,
he set the sun and stars in their places,
and he hung them like a finger pointing home,
so that wherever you stand,
something is always whispering,
"He is here. And he is kind."

But the sky cannot tell you everything.

The stars cannot say your name.
The sunrise cannot hold your hand
when you are afraid in the dark.
So God did something more.
He spoke.
He gave words:
words that are true,
words that make a tired heart wake up,
words that turn a worried child wise.

The man who wrote this poem
said God's words were sweeter than honey.
Sweeter than honey straight from the comb,
the kind that drips warm down your fingers.
That is how good it tasted to him,
to know, at last, that the One who made the sky
is good, all the way through.

And then his song grew slow and small.
Because he knew his own heart was not so clean.
He whispered, "Lord, keep me.
Wash the parts of me I cannot even see.
Let the words of my mouth,
and the thoughts hidden deep inside,
make you glad."

He was longing for something
he could not give himself:
a clean heart, a right life, a way to truly please God.

He did not know it yet,
but God was going to give him all three.

One day the Word the whole sky was singing about
would not stay up in the heavens.
He would come down.
He would have a name you could say:
Jesus.
He would have hands that could hold yours in the dark.
And he would live the clean, true, honey-sweet life
the poem-writer ached for and could never reach,
and then he would give it away,
to you.

The sky sang it without words.
Jesus would say it with his whole life:
God is good.
God is here.
God has come to bring you home.

So tonight, if you step outside and look up,
listen for the song.
And know that one day you will taste it for yourself,
warm and sweet as honey from the comb.